Superintendent's Update
Newport Public Schools | September 24, 2025
Dear Newport Schools Parents, Families, and Staff:
School Open Houses start this Thursday with the Rogers High School Open House from 5:00-6:30pm. Please take this great opportunity to visit your child’s school. Get to know the teachers, principals, and staff as well as the community partners that support our students and schools. This is a great way to start off the school year!
Rogers / NACTC: Thursday, September 25, 5:30 - 6:30, *Open House will start with a meet and greet presentation in the auditorium at 5:00.
Thompson Middle School: Monday, September 29, - 5:30 - 6:30
Pell Lower School - (PreK, K, 1) Monday, September 29 - 5:30 - 6:30
Pell Upper School - (Grades 2-4) Tuesday, September 30 - 5:30 - 6:30
As always, we need all of our parents to continue to reinforce with your children the importance of attendance. Too many students are still absent and are missing out on foundational learning. So please take the time to talk with your child about how important it is to attend school every day. We need your help to have all our children in school every day. Also please remember we have a new attendance policy that will track more accurately excused and unexcused absences. Unless a student has a chronic illness or condition, no child should be out of school more than 18 days per year. Vacations and time away from school are not excused absences. Director Candace Andrade, as part of our strategic plan, is heading up our attendance initiative. So please learn the new attendance policy and contact your child’s school administration or dean's office with questions or if you need further clarification. Let’s work together to have all our children in school every day.
As Superintendent, one of the best parts of my day is visiting our classrooms to see learning happening in action. There is nothing like watching a teacher guide students through a new concept or idea. A key part of our Strategic Plan is emphasizing these classroom visits for all our building leaders and directors to a minimum of five visits per week. We need to see in-person the great work our teachers are doing, and most importantly what our students are doing. We want to see more students participating, leaning into the classroom discussions and taking ownership of their learning. We should hear their voices and watch them take ownership of the lessons. Our teachers are there to guide and lead our students to grow our young people into strong minded, curious, educated and capable future leaders that advocate for oneself and speak up when they have an idea or need clarification. To help shape that environment every day all of us will visit classrooms to support our teachers so that our students make progress towards our Vision Of Excellence and Portrait Of A Graduate goals.
It has been great to resume classroom visits over the last week and each of our school principals and our directors will be making these a priority every week. Here’s a picture from Dr. Browner’s visit to a Grade 8 English Language Arts class being taught by Kate Dusel. Students were engaged and busy working on a “quote project.” In Mr. Bolano’s STEM class the students were busy looking at different phenomena with water cyclones, heat transfer, and more. The conversations were endless. The student questions are even more fun! So I encourage everyone to ask about your child’s day and find out what is happening in school. We want everyone to learn more!
This Friday is National School Parent Group Day, and we want to extend a big thank you to all of the parents who participate in the Pell, Thompson, and Rogers PTOs. Thank you for all that you do to support our schools and our students!
